


Like Riding a Bike

by SeeEmRunning



Series: Abused [2]
Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angst, Crossover, Gen, Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:17:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after Aaron Hotchner shoots his father to save him, Sam Winchester is in the FBI Academy. When the BAU gets a case involving decapitations and silver bullets, Sam is called in to assist in the profile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Riding a Bike

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ceejay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceejay/gifts), [sylvie411](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvie411/gifts).



Sequel

"We have three victims," Garcia said. "Same DNA at each scene, but nothing else connects them. We got a bullet to the heart, a decapitation, and man burned alive."

Hotch frowned; the pattern seemed familiar, but he couldn't place why. "Have there been similar crimes committed? Or anything strange in town?"

"Uh…" she typed on her laptop a few times. "Two grave desecrations, but that's about it."

Hotch was hit with a visual of something that had happened over a decade earlier: a small, pale boy slurring out his prowess at disinterment with something approaching pride. "The bullet to the heart, was it made of silver?"

"How'd you know that?" Garcia asked.

Hotch sighed. "It was one of my first cases. The unsub was bleeding his son out in alleys and killing the people who came to help him. When the kid - his name's Sam - was recovered enough to talk, he told me his dad thought he was hunting vampires and werewolves, thought of himself as a savior. Taught Sam to do it, too."

"How old was the kid?" Morgan asked.

"He was ten when we found him," Hotch answered. "He'd be in his early twenties now."

"You think it might be him?"

"No, he's actually here. I helped him get into training."

"So he's an agent," JJ said.

"No, he's still in the Academy. He might be able to help us figure out who this unsub is, though."

"Are you sure it's related?" Rossi asked.

"Silver bullets aren't cheap," Hotch answered. "Pure silver to the heart for a werewolf, decapitation for a vampire, grave desecrations for ghosts, and burning alive could be wendigo or rougarou."

"And you remember this from a conversation with a child ten years ago," Morgan said skeptically.

"Oh God no. I remember from the letters we sent back and forth." Hotch gave a small smile. "He's a good kid." He pulled out his phone. "He could probably tell us more about this guy than anyone else."

"Then let's call him in," Rossi said.

Hotch sent a quick text. _Are you busy?_

While waiting for a reply, he broached the next subject. "If he agrees, I want him to come with us."

"Why?" Prentiss asked. "We can handle it, whatever it is."

"I know we can," Hotch answered, "but this was his reality for ten years. He might see connections we don't because we don't have the same background he does."

His phone buzzed. **In class**

_Then should you be texting?_

**Interogation techniks known this for a while**

_Who is your instructor?_

**Greg Johnson y**

Hotch didn't answer, instead looking up the extension for the room and dialing. "This is SSA Aaron Hotchner, from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Can you send Samuel Winchester up to our offices?"

"Uh, sure. Can I ask what this is about?"

"You can." Hotch didn't say anything else.

Johnson seemed to give up. "Fine. I'll just ask him when he gets back down."

"He won't be coming back today."

"Fine. Winchester!" He hung up.

Hotch flipped his phone closed. "He's coming."

"Now or with us?" Rossi asked.

"Both," Hotch answered.

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the doorjamb. A gangly young man with brown hair and eyes stood in the doorway. "Agent Hotchner?"

"Sam, come in."

The eyes moved to the screen; his face went blank. "Vamp, were, and rougarou?"

"You got that from one look?" Morgan asked.

Sam's eyes fell on him, and he seemed to shrink a little bit even as his eyes widened. "I figured I wouldn't be up here if it didn't have to do with things like that. Wasn't hard to place the patterns on the screen, though the second could be a shifter or a wraith."

"I thought the same," Hotch said casually. "Come in, Sam."

He shoved off the doorway and came a few feet inside. "What do you need?"

"What can you tell us about people like this?"

"They're not going to stop," was the first thing out of his mouth. "They consider themselves heroes. Anyone human gets killed, they're collateral damage, worth the sacrifice for taking out the monsters. Anyone can be a monster. Anything can be a monster-related death, from suicide to animal attack to disappearance. The best way to track them is by searching for weird things happening - freak electrical storms, cattle deaths, a string of crimes outside the national average. They won't stay in the same town for long, since they're using fake credit cards. If they think you have them on a lesser charge, they're going to come quietly and try to talk their way out of it. If they think you've got them on murder, they'll kill themselves outright or suicide by cop. How long ago was the first death?"

"Five days," Hotch answered. "The last one was yesterday."

"They will have moved on by now, then."

"Can you tell us where they're going?" JJ asked.

Sam frowned. "An hour with a computer and I can give you a good guess."

"You've qualified with all the physical subjects, right?" Hotch asked. Sam nodded. "How close are you to being done?"

"Two more quarters."

"And you've qualified with a handgun?"

"Of course."

"Can you afford to miss a few days of class?"

"I - I suppose, why?"

"I want you to come with us on this."

"Why?" Sam seemed more bewildered than suspicious, which reminded Hotch he'd somehow managed to gain the young man's trust after shooting his father in front of him.

"You know myths and legends better than anyone here," Hotch said. "You might see things we miss."

Sam nodded slowly. "All right, then."  
***  
"So did you ever hunt demons?" Morgan asked him.

Sam didn't look up from the file he was reading through. "Yep."

"How'd you do that? I mean, do normal weapons work on them?"

Sam closed the folder and looked at him. "According to dearly delusional Dad? Shotgun shells packed with rock salt slow them down. A symbol called a devil's trap can keep them from leaving or using powers. Exorcisms will send them back to Hell, usually kill the vessel ."

"Do you remember how to do an exorcism?" Reid asked from behind him.

Sam shrugged. "It's just chants, pretty straightforward. God above, cast out the demon, help us save the poor possessed, and so on and so forth."

"Do you remember the words?"

"Course." Sam recited one in Latin, then one in Japanese.

"Good memory," JJ said.

Sam shrugged again. "Dad was big on making sure I knew how to kill, or at least get rid of, everything he thought was out there. Drilled me in exorcisms, plans of attack, weapons maintenance, everything he thought I might need when I took over the family business." He couldn't help the bitterness in his voice, nor the air quotes around 'family business'.

"And you remembered it all these years," Morgan said. "Why?"

Sam shook his head. "Dad told me to remember something, I remembered it."

"For ten years?"

"Do you remember your first address?" he shot back. "Your parents' phone numbers? Your best friend's name in elementary school?"

"Well, yeah."

"Other stuff you learned that young. Dates of wars? Long division? Plant anatomy?"

"Yeah. There a point to this?"

"Hunting _was_ my long division and plant anatomy and dates. If you remember all that, is it so surprising I remember that when I had more motivation than test grades?"

"Good. For a minute there I was afraid you were another Reid," JJ joked.

"How so?"

"I have an eidetic memory," Reid explained.

"With your job? Man, that must _suck._ "

"It can. So what do you think? About the case?"

"Uh." Sam swallowed. "I'm still looking through the file."

"Come on, kid, you've been looking at that thing forty-five minutes. Are you just that slow?" Morgan teased.

Sam blushed, unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Yeah. Dad thought reading was unnecessary, so I didn't start learning until I was eleven. You can really only be good at it if you start by six or seven."

There was an awkward silence. Sam flipped the file back open to hide his burning face.  
***  
Hotch introduced them all to the lead detective. Sam smiled tightly and followed the group to the conference room, where he sat quietly with his laptop and pulled up news sites while Hotch gave out assignments.

"Large print," Reid observed from behind him. He and JJ had both been left behind, JJ to set up the board, Reid supposedly to work on a geographical profile. Sam had the creeping suspicion it was more to keep an eye on him.

"Easier to read." Sam clicked through the news sites.

"What are you looking for? Our tech analyst might be able to find it faster."

"It's not what I'm looking for so much as what I'm not," Sam answered. "Phrases that jump out - mysterious, unsolved, no leads. Patterns - a string of missing hikers in a wooded area, more disappearances than should be expected for the time of year, blips in tourism, crop blights, cattle deaths, thunderstorms that shouldn't be happening given the weather. Statistical anomalies. Anything weird."

"What do those have to do with monsters?"

"Well - what did I say? Missing hikers? That could be wendigo, takes one to two dozen every twenty-three years. Disappearances could be human or monster, no way to tell until you look closer. Tourism blips means something's cooking the books to make it look like there are fewer people in its town than there should be, keeps records off so when people disappear it can't be traced back. Crop blights, cattle deaths, and electrical storms mean demon. The thing about these people is that anything can be a monster and little can be human. Optimistic, in a way."

"How so?" JJ asked.

"If the worst things in the world are done by monsters, it means humans can still be good." Sam squinted at the computer and mouthed a word, sounding it out silently.

"You don't believe that?" JJ asked.

Sam laughed, but there was no humor. "As a whole, I believe humanity is, or wants to be, good. But as individuals, we are selfish, shortsighted, violent beasts."

"Some people would say that's pessimistic," Reid pointed out.

"But not you?" Sam flashed a smile to take the sting out of the words.

Reid shrugged. "I'm not sure whether I prefer the men-are-monsters view or the monsters-are-real one. JJ?"

"Definitely prefer the one where monsters don't exist," she said, smiling a bit. "Though I imagine Sam can tell us how to protect ourselves."

"Salt will help with spirits and demons, which are just twisted spirits anyway," he answered absentmindedly. "Silver repels werewolves, shifters, and wraiths, iron repels spirits of all kinds, what isn't dealt with that way can usually be killed by decapitation or being burn- hello, there, Visberg, what's going on with you?"

"Visberg?" Reid repeated.

"Three hours away. They just found a second body with sulfur at the scene. Bet that's where he's headed next."

"Sulfur?" JJ asked blankly.

"Sulfur, formerly known as brimstone. As in, fire and. Calling card of demons. We're probably going to find a body shot with rock salt and doused in water in the next few days."

"Why water?"

"Holy water."

"So look for priests," Reid suggested.

Sam shook his head. "All you need is a cross and some Latin."

"Really."

"Really." Sam clicked through another link. "Exsanguinations in the opposite direction. Wonder which one he's going for."

"You're thinking vampire?"

"Depends. I need to see if there are any...yeah, throats were ripped out. Depending on which type of vamp he believes in, this could be a stronger case for him."

"Which type?"

"Yeah. There's your classic two-fang bite-and-suck, which is inefficient. Then there's the rip-the-throat, which is messier but easier to get the blood from. The bat, which hangs the vics upside-down and unhinges the jaw to pierce the jugular and carotid both, letting gravity and heartbeats pump the blood into the mouth. One drinks from the wrists. One goes straight for the heart, one for the femoral artery. You name it, there's a variation for it."

"What type do you believe in?"

"I don't. Dad was of the rip-the-throat-out persuasion, so that's what I grew up on, but I got over it."

"I'll call Hotch," JJ said. "Let him know there are two possibles."

"I'll keep looking," Sam said, turning back to the computer.

Two hours later, he hadn't turned anything else up and his eyes were hurting from looking at a computer for so long. He rubbed them hard, trying to push back the eyestrain tears.

A cup hit the table by his elbow. JJ smiled at him. "I can't look at a monitor that long, either."

"Thanks." He smiled wanly and took a sip.

"How ya doing with the photos? They're not the most appetizing things to look at, I know."

"I've seen worse."

"Yeah? Where?"

"I was better with computers than my dad was, so I was the one who hacked into the databases. When I was seven, there was a case where the vics had been flayed, raped, and partially dismembered. These are just ripped throats."

"And you saw those pictures?" Reid asked.

"Yeah. At that point, I'd seen enough and understood little enough that it didn't bother me."

"Understood little enough?"

"Not like I knew what rape was when I was seven. The flaying and dismemberment I saw on a pretty regular basis." He sipped the coffee to hide his expression.

"He did a number on you, didn't he," Reid said.

"Everyone's parents do. We all take their neuroses into adulthood. Mine just passed on a bit more than most."

"I can quote psych 101 too," JJ said dryly.

"Caught me." Sam flashed a dimpled smile. "Usually try to not think about him. It's too confusing."

"How is it confusing?" Reid asked.

Sam sighed and propped his chin on his hand, eyes unfocusing a little. "For all his faults, for his violence and drinking and everything else, he could be...good. Even when he was bleeding me, he was kind about it. And I can't - I know he was a monster, but he was good, too, and I've been trying to make those fit together for years now. And they don't." Sam's eyes refocused and he rubbed the scars on his arms, remnants of his father's failure and of his own. "Can we get back to work now, please?"

"Yeah," JJ said, frowning as she turned back to the board. "So this is where the people were taken."

"Geographical profile indicates his comfort zone is the entire city," Reid said.

"Well, he's a drifter, so that makes sense," Sam said. "He knows nobody's going to recognize him, he's familiar with security systems, he doesn't have anything to fear unless he gets caught in the act."

"And he's too careful to get caught in the act," JJ said. "And you're sure he's moved on by now?"

"He's probably using fake credit cards, so he won't stay somewhere more than a week. If there weren't any suspicious deaths he wasn't following up on and hadn't taken care of, he'd move on as fast as possible. If he hadn't, there would have been another body by now." His computer beeped at him and he clicked on the alert bubble. "Vamp Town PD just got a beheading."

"Think it's our guy?"

"The odds of two of these people being so close? And not working together? Wouldn't happen." Sam clicked through the report. "Looks like machete marks."

"Are those reports open to us yet?" JJ asked.

"No idea. Maybe," Sam answered, ignoring the look Reid and JJ exchanged. He squinted at the screen instead. "Took him eighteen strokes to get through, so he's not very strong."

"Or he's hesitating."

Sam shook his head. "If he believes this is a vampire, he wouldn't hesitate. How many strokes did it take here?"

"ME couldn't determine," Reid answered. "It was too distorted."

"Where are the photos?" Sam muttered, bursting into movement. "The photos, the photos, where are they?" He pushed the folders on the table around, flipping them open and pushing them aside. "Here." He opened the report and looked at the photographs. "Took twenty to twenty-five for this one, almost thirty for the first."

"How do you know that?" JJ asked.

"Unlike the ME," Sam said, "I've seen decapitations as they happened. Book knowledge is well and good, but experience is the best teacher."

It was clear neither Reid nor JJ knew how to respond to that, and neither tried.  
***  
That afternoon, they found themselves in a car heading east. "How sure are you about this, Winchester?" Morgan asked for the fourth time.

"Pretty sure," Sam answered tiredly. He was tired of the older man second-guessing him. "It was this or Visberg, and unless he has a personal vendetta against demons, he came this way. Higher body count."

"What if he _does_ have a vendetta against demons?" Reid asked from behind them. Sam had gotten the front passenger seat by virtue of being taller than the rest of them.

"Then he's going to Visberg. That's why Hotch wanted us to split up."

"Why aren't you with Hotch on this one?" Morgan asked.

Sam shrugged. "Guess he figured he knew what to look for better than you guys do. Garcia flagged card fraud, right?"

"Yep," Morgan said.

"That's probably gonna be what trips him up," Sam said, tapping his fingers on his knee.

It was. He used a card Garcia had flagged from the first town at a Red Roof Inn - a higher quality place than Sam's dad had spent money on, but then, John always was a cheap bastard. Room 17. Hotch's team didn't even bother coming out, just turned around and headed back to the first town because they wouldn't get to Morgan before the extraction was done.

In the end, it was almost a disappointing capture. They went in when he was asleep and had him in cuffs before he was fully awake. Morgan and Reid hauled him out to a squad car as Sam looked on.

"Back we go," Morgan said with a tired sigh when they'd finished their reports at the station.

As they drove back west, Sam had to wonder if every case was so easy. _Boring_ , a little voice in his mind whispered, but he quashed it. Boredom was preferable to being bled in alleyways to satisfy a sadistic, psychotic father who was a good man when he wasn't hunting.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, people, there are two ways this story can go from here: one, John remains delusional and nothing supernatural occurs (in which case this is the end, I'm afraid); or two, John isn't delusional and the YED comes back for Sam (which is the one I, personally, am leaning towards). If you feel strongly either way, tell me in the comments. Otherwise, I'm going to go with the second option.


End file.
